Monday, April 23, 2012

The Ersatz Staff

I could see she wasn't buying it. “But
it's fake,” she insisted.
“You said so yourself.”

“That's not the
point, Jess,” I said mildly, and popped open the car's trunk.

“Then
what the hell is the
point!” she all but shouted, and I shushed
her frantically. No need to draw attention, after all.

She took a deep
breath and tried again. “If it's a forgery, then why steal it? Help
me out, here, Brian, because I'm at a loss as to why it's even worth
the effort.”

“It's simple,”
I began, taking a duffel bag out of the trunk and balancing it on the
bumper. “About eighty, eighty-five years ago, a British artist
carved it as a gift to one of his archaeologist friends. It was
supposed to be a joke, apparently – the staff of Ra, in all its
splendor. And the materials that make it up are authentic to the
period, it has that much going for it. Anyway he didn't tell his
friend it was a forgery right away, and his friend immediately went
to about a dozen museums and showed it off, and they authenticated
it. That's how good the carving was.”

“Right, okay. So
when did the other shoe drop?”

“I'm getting to
that,” I said dismissively, handing her a grapnel hook. “The
artist was mortified, obviously. Eventually the archaeologist sold it
to this very museum -“ I waved a flashlight in the general
direction of the building - “for the modern equivalent of 500,000
pounds.”

Jess whistled at
that.

“The artist was
far too embarrassed to reveal the joke at this point. He left it in
his will, apparently, that all involved parties be informed.” I
shrugged, taking out a pair of black masks and handing one to her
before donning one myself. “Can't say I blame him. The museum
sometimes exhibits it as a whole thing about hoaxes. It's great. Saw
it last year.”

“I see. Well, no,
I still don't. Why are we here?”

I smiled. “It
turns out – and this is the good part – it turns out that the
staff, while a fake, does have one very special, very interesting
feature.”

She crossed her
arms and raised her eyebrows in that 'this-had-better-be-good'
expression she'd gotten so good at in the three years we'd known each
other.

I gave my best
effort to keep a straight face, but I can't say I succeeded. “The
orb on the end of the staff had some very intricate carvings –
hieroglyphs, mainly. It so happens that the artist took great pains
to learn how to write ancient Egyptian.”

“Awfully
elaborate prank.”

“Well, it seems
that it wasn't just a prank.” I pulled a big green book from the
duffel bag and, setting the bag back into the trunk and closing it, I
cracked open the book to a dog-eared page.

She frowned at
this. “What is that?” she asked, skepticism replaced with
curiosity.

“It is,” I
said, unable to maintain my composure and grinning widely now, “a
list of the members of the ancient Cult of Tangarō .”

“Never heard of
it.” Skeptical again.

“You wouldn't
have. Very secretive, very obscure.” I looked at her. “Not that
ancient, either, to be honest. They just insisted on calling
themselves that, like Gardner and his lot. Founded 1924 in London,
vague ties to Aleister Crowley himself, all that.”

“Fascinating”
she intoned drily. “Can we move on?”

“Right, right.
Well, despite a rather lackluster member count – membership peaked
at twenty-nine people – they had a strict hierarchy, as any decent
cult will, and it turns out our artist was pretty high on the pecking
order. At that time their little sect was dying out, and he wanted to
leave a legacy for the cult.”

She frowned again.
“But if the 'ancient Egyptian' turned out to be propaganda for a
modern cult, doesn't that sort of give the game away?”

“Oh,
sure. Which is why he didn't do that.” I flipped to another page
about three-quarters through the book, and read. “'Those
with true Wisdom, who learn well the words of the Gods and can divine
their meaning, and who put aside folly and the evils of this world,
shall come to reap great rewards, and all shall tremble to behold
such wealth.' Do you see this?”
I was pointing now to a group of numbers halfway down the page. “It's
a code. You know how some ciphers will be based on books, with a page
and line number or whatever?”

She nodded.

“This,”
I declared proudly, slapping the page with the back of my hand,
“refers to the staff.”

“So
what you're saying,” Jess began slowly, “is that, in the back
room of a second-rate museum, there is a fake Egyptian staff that
looks real, that while
being in and of itself bereft of value, contains encoded upon it the
secrets of some shitty cult that couldn't even muster thirty people
at a time, and your plan is to go in and steal the
damn thing?”

“Yep.”

“Risking
imprisonment and possible injury?”

“Mhm.”

She considered that
for a moment. “Why didn't you just go in and ask to study it?”
she finally asked.

I barked laughter.
“That's rich. You make it sound like I still have credentials.”

“That
wasn't my fault. And
it's fake anyway, what do they care?”

“Who knows? I
already asked and they said no.” She looked like she was going to
say something else but I stopped her. “Before you ask it, no,
there's not a scan posted online either, and none of my old buddies from
the lab would help. We're on our own.”

She held my gaze
for a moment, then hefted the grapnel. “Then what the hell are we
waiting for?”